Write Well Me

FreeCell

My newest passion?  FreeCell.

Yep, I'm officially a dork. 

Now, it could be a shadow activity, but I don't really feel that I'm avoiding doing other things by playing FreeCell. 

Are there other things I could be doing?  Sure. 

Do I want do them?  No.

Okay, so maybe playing FreeCell is a shadow activity, but I'm enjoying the heck out of it!  I listen to Christmas music and play game after game after game... Eventually, I do go do what I need to do, and I get everything done.

I'm on the fence about it.  Maybe in a way, this is a shadow activity.  But it could also be just plain ol' worthwhile goofing off.  How often do we allow ourselves the freedom and the pleasure to just sit around and do something worthless?  I know before this year I rarely did, and if I did, it was after I got everything else done, which, as you can imagine, wasn't very often.

I'm going to stop analyzing why I play FreeCell and just enjoy playing it when I do.  And I won't feel guilty about all the other things I'm not doing.

Favorite Christmas Movies

Ah, Christmas season!  I don't care if it is still November; I love Christmas! 

Now, I'm not one of those nutzoids who has all her Christmas shopping done by June, and I refuse to listen to any music with even a hint of bells.  The day after Thanksgiving, however, is another story.  It's Christmas!

There's hot chocolate, Christmas carols, beautiful lights, cookies and candies, and, of course, favorite Christmas movies. Below is the list of movies we start watching as soon as the turkey leftovers are gone: traditional movies as well as some you probably never would have thought of as Christmas movies.

Long Kiss Goodnight – If you liked Geena Davis in Commander in Chief, check her out as an assassin-with-amnesia-turned-schoolteacher with Samuel Jackson.

The Santa Clause and The Santa Clause 2 – I'll admit that I love Tim Allen as Santa Claus.  I  haven't seen Santa Claus 3 yet (I'm a little afraid to; I haven't read any good reviews about it).

It's a Wonderful Life - I was watching It's A Wonderful Life well before it was popular.

Miracle on 34th Street – I was introduced to Miracle after It's a Wonderful Life, so I have to admit I'm in the Wonderful Life camp. One of my favorite holiday books is Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, and “Miracle” follows the amusing tale of a woman who gets her heart's desire and a Christmas Spirit who insists Miracle on 34th Street is far superior to It's a Wonderful Life.

The Muppet Christmas Carol is by far one of the most faithful renditions of Charles Dickens's Christmas tale (even with the Muppet banter).

One of my new favorites is Love Actually, a series of stories centering around a variety of characters who all seem to be related. It's another Alan Rickman charmer, and Colin Firth also plays a role (no wonder I love this movie!!).

And since we're talking about heartthrobs, a Christmas movie list would not be complete without The Bishop's Wife with Cary Grant and Loretta Young. I will watch any movie with Cary Grant in it!!

The Ref is another foray into non-traditional Christmas movies with one of Kevin Spacey's first major roles. If you have in-law issues, you have to see this movie!

A Christmas Story - You'll shoot your eye out, kid!

And we can't forget Last Holiday.

Enjoy!

Marketing and Periods

Okay, men, you're excused; read no further.  When I say, "Marketing and Periods," I mean that kind of period, not the punctuation that goes at the end of the sentence.

"Oh," say all the men, and they quickly go surf somewhere else.

Yes, it's that time of the month, and while that's not exciting news (well, I guess it would be if one was afraid she was pregnant...), it has brought something to my attention that I wanted to share.

The pads I use have a message on the wrapper covering the adhesive.

"Have a happy period."

What does that mean?  Do any of us get that excited over our periods?  And why have it on the wrapper?  Is it really going to make us buy more Always pads? 

Please weigh in!

Darkness Falls Across M&M's - Part II

Just in case you didn't get how much of a freak for dark chocolate I am, I thought I'd share with you a new decorator tip.  Take pretty stemware that you only use for special occasions and fill with candy.  Place all over the house, including your bedroom.

Anastasia's comment:  "Mommy!  You put candy in one of your fancy glasses!"

Chris's comment:  "Oh great.  Now when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I can just grab a handful of M&M's.  Thanks."

Darkness Falls Across M&M's

This is the coolest thing ever!!!!  Thanks to Meryl for blogging about it, and if I hadn't felt neurotically pressed to catch up on over 400 blog postings, I would have never found it.  Neuroses are good for some things, it seems.  (And I have to say that I'm shocked that I hadn't heard about this before today.  Where are all my dark chocolate friends?)

I know we're supposed to be thinking about how grateful we are as tomorrow is Turkey Day, but I've always had a thing for horror movies.  The game is right up my alley.  Take a look - at the very least just to enjoy the art.

First of all, let me just say that I'm thrilled that M&M's makes dark chocolate M&M's.  Dark M&M's came out when Revenge of the Sith was released; you could choose your allegiance to the dark side M&M's or the Force M&M's.  Months after the movie was passe, I was looking for the dark side (I pledge my life to the dark side if dark chocolate is involved - just joking - mostly!) M&M's, and eventually they disappeared.

Imagine how happy I was to find holiday dark chocolate M&Ms!  I bought four bags and one bag of obligatory milk chocolate for my husband.  I hope dark M&M's stay for good!

An Ancient Muse Releases Today!

Don't expect to find me in my office today.  For one, it's Tuesday, and Tuesday is my no-work, no responsibilities day.  For another, it's the day that Loreena McKennitt's new CD, An Ancient Muse, releases in stores.  I'll just trot myself right over to Barnes & Noble and use my nifty birthday gift certificates to bring this hot little item home.

For those of you who don't me well, Loreena McKennitt is my all-time favorite artist.  I love her music, her voice, and the stories she tells.  I've subscribed to her newsletter, and so I get updates on concerts (she doesn't tour much) and new music (this is her first CD she's released in several years).

The music is haunting and captivating, and her new CD promises to be so as well.  Take a look at the e-cards that were sent to newsletter subscribers:  this and this.

Just to show you how much I adore Loreena McKennitt's music, let me tell you what I considered doing in 2005.  We were planning on going to Canada (Quebec, specifically) with Stacy and Dominic.  It was going to be a nine-day trip, and we were driving from Maryland to Quebec and back again.  A few days before we were due to leave, I got notice in her newsletter that Loreena would be holding a concert in Canada.  "Hey," I thought.  "We're going to Canada!  I'll just pop on over for the concert."

Well, the concert was on the west coast of Canada, thousands of miles from where we were going to be.  It wasn't exactly a hop, skip, and a jump.  So I didn't go.

But there's hope yet!  Today I'm looking at the Quinlan Road website, and I see Loreena is actually going to be in the U.S. December 14!!!  She'll be holding an in-store appearance at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square in New York City.

Um.  That's a no-brainer. 

Now, I just have to convince Chris that I'll go on yet another trip (I'll only be gone for a day or two!!), and I'll get to see and maybe even meet Loreena in person.  Omigosh!!!

Anyone up for a trip to New York?

Sexy Spanish Book Club For Maya - What Possibilities Can You Create?

Maya, who moved to Argentina from the U.S., wants to learn Spanish.  Now, the idea she came up with to learn Spanish was... well, let's just call it unique and unconventional.  You can get the full scoop here, but the gist of it is that she thought it would be more fun to learn Spanish by writing love letters to an imaginary Spanish lover.  She posted an ad for a teacher on a local forum (you HAVE to read the ad!), and the response has been amazing.  She's even had to start a new blog for all the buzz it's created.

This idea has taken off so hugely that Maya has already started writing a book and pitching it to publishers.  She's commissioned a logo and developed a licensing plan.  All of this came from an idea to learn a language. 

Maya calls this looking at your challenge (in her case, wanting to learn Spanish), finding the Wow, and seeing the possibilities.

I love that idea of just letting your mind go free and exploring all the possibilities.  Maybe some of them aren't viable possibilities, but maybe those very same options will lead to options that absolutely bloom and lead to something great.  Nothing should be left unconsidered.

One of my current challenges is Write Well U.  I know that whenever I devote any amount of time to the bigger picture (as opposed to the routine tasks of evaluating writing pieces), my imagination soars.  I come up with tons of ideas, and I have pages and pages of stuff.  Some of it will get incorporated into Write Well U, some of it will get trashed, and some will transform into other ideas.

What is your challenge?  What Wows can you find?  What possibilities do those Wows lead to?

What Dawn Is Reading Today - 11/19/06

I'm trying something new with my "What Dawn Is Reading Today."  I usually write my blurb and leave it over there on the right.  However, knowing that some people use RSS feeds to read blog posts, I know that those items in the right-hand side don't show up on the RSS readers.  So, I'm copying what's over there to here. 

If you're new to Write Well Me, read this to understand why I tell you what I'm reading.  :-)

I finished Phantom fairly quickly (and I can't find anything on the publish date for the last book in the series - darn!).

Down to the basement to my shelf of unread books I went, and then the decision of what to read. (An interesting post might be about all the books I keep putting off reading - why?) I chose The Thirteenth Tale, and it was a good choice from the very beginning.

It's a celebration of reading, books, and words, and there's a great story to be had to - of Margaret, with an untold tale of her dead twin, who goes off to interview famous author Vida Winter, who has her own tale to tell and secrets to reveal.

But it's more than just the story. Take a look at this excerpt:

"And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so. For it must be very lonely being dead."

Isn't that wonderful? I love the imagery and the idea that our souls are immortal through the words we write.

And this long paragraph, which so accurately describes why I, too, read books:

"I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled."

Update on Last Writing Rant

So I ranted, and, boy, did I get some different opinions.  Lisa herself even commented on what I wrote about how I disagreed with her.  And she did so very graciously, I'd like to add.

Catch up on the comments on the rant I wrote and Lisa's blog post she was driven to write.  :-)  Here's the most important excerpt in case you're pressed for time:

Imagine you put your heart and soul into creating a Power Point that reflects every thing you hold dear and when you show it at a meeting, the first words out of your boss’ mouth are, “There’s a typo on slide 9.”

Now reverse that, and imagine she says, “These ideas are great, tell me more about what you think.”

And then after you’ve shared the inner secrets of your soul she says, “I want the world to see this, so let’s present it as perfect as we possibly can.”

That is what good writing does - presents the idea to the world in the best possible way so that everyone who reads understands those inner secrets.

Talking in Parts of Speech

Last week at dinner, we came up with the fun idea to talk only in adjectives.  The conversation went something like this:

Chris:  "Interesting."

Anastasia:  "Annoying."

Kathryn:  "Fun."

Dawn:  "Hungry."

Chris:  "Hungrier."

Anastasia:  "Complaining."

Kathryn:  "Boring."

Anastasia:  "Annoyed."

Chris:  "Repetitive."

And so it went.  It was fun and interesting to see how much meaning we could convey in sentences comprised only of one adjective.

We've tried since with other parts of speech, and we've found that adjectives still work best.  Verbs are the hardest to convey meaning, and adverbs don't work well without other parts of speech to help out the meaning.  Nouns come pretty close, but it's hard to describe what's going on with only a noun.  "Dinner" and "food" are about it.

Try it tonight with your family or friends and let me know how it goes!

What Dawn Is Reading Today - 11/9/06

I created some space in my life this week in order to counteract some of the stuff going on.  I filled that time with books - not a really bad thing.  :-)

There's a new book posted under What Dawn Is Reading Today over on the sidebar.  Enjoy!

If you're new to Write Well Me, read this to understand why I tell you what I'm reading.  :-)

Surrender

As you can probably guess, I've spent the last week doing some deep thinking, with the help of my friends (isn't that a song lyric?).  Stacy told me that she's been watching this build for some time to see where it went.  I asked her what "this" was.  She said that I've been saying over and over that I'm not happy, and that I've been saying that for a while.  That threw me for a loop.

I think of myself as a pretty positive, happy (some might even call me perky) person.  Now that I look back on my life in the past nine or ten weeks, I haven't been so positive, happy, or perky.  After last week and my almost-physical paralysis, I realized that I was depressed and despairing.  I've had some experience with both depression and despair, and I can recollect clearly those times I was depressed (four) or in despair (two). I'm not talking about hormonal depression or a one-day thing; I'm talking about when a situation or chemical has you in a depression that lasts for days or weeks. 

The most recent experience I had with depression was three years ago when the severe pain in my abdomen was diagnosed as endometriosis.  My doctor wasn't able to reach it during surgery, so he put me on a medicine that simulates menopause in order to dry up the endometriosis.  He also put me on estrogen to counteract the negative effects of menopause.  The treatment was supposed to last six months.

The first three months were almost pure hell.  In the previous experiences I had had with depression before, nothing ever came close to the depth and length of this depression.  I found I was crying almost all the time, I felt almost numb inside, and I had no motivation to do anything.  After my three-month check-up, my gynecologist wanted to know why I hadn't told him what was going on.  I shrugged.  I knew why I was depressed, and I knew it would end soon.  What was there to do about it?  He said he could have written me a prescription for anti-depressants. 

But it didn't matter.  The endometriosis was dried up and gone, and he told me to stop taking estrogen immediately.  I did, and the depression cleared within a few days.

Now I'm back at the depression place where I have no energy, I'm almost numb, and I feel incomplete - not completely myself.  I know why I'm at this place; it's because this whole eye thing has sapped my emotional strength and physical energy.  I'm not able to live the life I want (and that, quite frankly, I was able to live before my surgery), and I'm not happy with that option.  Yeah, I know.  Another "not happy."

It occurred to me this weekend that I could take anti-depressants.  I could possibly see light and not wait for the end of the tunnel, which seems weeks and months away.  I could make it easier on myself and not struggle so much with the emotional strain while I'm trying to get better.

I shared what I was thinking with Stacy, and she said, "But you haven't been diagnosed with depression!"

I don't need to be diagnosed by a psychiatrist to know that what I'm feeling is depression.  When I sprain my ankle in Colorado and feel that pop, do I need to go to an orthopedic surgeon for him to diagnose that it's sprained?  No.  I know what to do (therapy, rest, massage, and specific ankle exercises).

The point isn't whether the chemicals help me.  It's that I've surrendered.

Not in a I've-lost-the-battle form of surrender, but in a I'm-not-in-control-of-absolutely-everything-around me form of surrender.  I can't do it all.

I've never wanted to consider anti-depressants, even the few times a therapist or doctor has recommended it during those periods of depression.  I felt that *I* knew what was wrong; I could solve it.  I didn't need medicine to help me do those things.  It's the same way I view my struggle with weight loss.  I know what to do:  eat sensibly and exercise.  There isn't a magic pill.  *I* should be able to do it myself.  That's why I haven't joined any support groups - I should be able to do it all myself.

The interesting thing is that I don't look down upon those who seek outside themselves for aid.  Close friends are on anti-depressants, and I know many people who have used the support of weight-loss groups like Weight Watchers.  I cheer them on.

And don't allow myself any outside support (until recently - thanks, Stacy!). 

But for me, it's different.  For some reason, I think I should be able to control it all.  I think I should be able to will myself to health.  I think it's up to me whether my eyes improve or not.  I think it's within my control to stave off another surgery.  I should be able to work hard and long and make it all work.

And I can't.

So, whether I choose to take anti-depressants or not, the lesson itself is more powerful.

I surrender.

Finally - Sanctuary

This is a post I've been wanting to write for a long time, but it keeps escaping me, probably because I wanted to include pictures (how dumb is that a reason for not writing a post?).

We have a lovely house with an open floor plan and rooms that flow into one another.  We have tons of windows and lots of natural light.  The rooms are decent sized, and some are just downright monstrously huge.  One of those rooms is our bedroom.  The original floor plan called for a bedroom and a sitting room with a wall separating the majority of the two rooms.  When we toured one of the houses in the neighborhood with the same floor plan, that wall really seemed to dissect the two rooms and make them seem small.  Our bright idea was to remove the wall and make the two rooms one larger room.

Great except that with the builder's off-white paint and this huge open space, the room was cold and uninviting.  After a couple of years, it became my least favorite room. 

Bit by bit, we've painted the other rooms, hung curtains, and decorated, and much of the house has come together.  Except the bedroom.  I never knew what I wanted to do with it, and I remained unhappy with it.

One day back in April, we were shopping at Potomac Mills, and I saw a picture at Kirkland's.  For some time, I had thought about heavy burgundy curtains, but I had no idea what color I would paint the walls.  Brown didn't sound like fun, and with burgundy curtains, I couldn't do red walls or the room would look as if it were bleeding.  But when I saw this picture, then it all became clear.  I could do a brown, a kind of bronze-brown color.   I had this image in my mind -  I call it  French Whorehouse or Bordello-ish. (I've since had an interior designer tell me that style is called heavy Baroque.  Heavy Baroque it is.)  And no, this has nothing to do with my new company.

We made a stop at Linens 'N' Things, and I picked out a set of curtains to bring home to see if I liked.  They were definitely red/burgundy, and they had nice little tassels on them.  :-)

Now it was time to find the paint.  We went to Lowe's, and Chris helped me find a nice brown.  I was thinking one of their cool textured paints in which you add sand or granite flecks to the paint, but Chris found this really cool paint color that just shimmered.  It was two different paints, but the associate assured us that one coat of each would cover.

We started painting before we went to the Bahamas, and we left on vacation with the room taped, sheet cloths over the furniture too heavy to move, and all that heavy furniture shoved to the middle of the room.  The T.V. cabinet was inches from the foot of our bed, but for a couple of weeks, the change was kind of nice.

We finished painting the room, and it was lovely. (Um, it was two coats of the base, and three coats of the second paint.  Not quite the one coat each promised us by the sales associate, but oh well.)  We decided that after six years of the furniture in one place, we should think about moving things around.  The bed went to another wall (which meant I could see the fireplace from the bed, something I couldn't do with the bed directly across from the fireplace), and we brought up a red chair from the basement (which then meant Chris could get a recliner for the basement.  He wasn't complaining.).

We liked the curtains from Linens 'N' Things, and so I ordered more.  We went to Target to find drapery hardware, and we found two we liked.  We brought them home to see which one we liked better, and made our decision.  However, in the time we had bought the two different rods, the one we liked went on sale, which was good, but it meant that the rods were on backorder, and it took us several weeks to get all the rods we needed.

The bedroom was finished, but there was an empty space in the corner.  In keeping with the heavy Baroque theme, we bought a chaise, and it filled the space nicely.  Other than the little bistro table I bought for next to the red chair, it's the only new furniture we bought.  Everything else we already had, either in the bedroom, or from other places in the house.  It came together nicely, I think.

What's the point of all this?  Well, one thing I didn't realize when I did this room was how much of a sanctuary it creates for me.  Sure, one portion of this room is my creative space (remember DCS?), and it's where I work on Write Well University.  However, it's also become a comfort space for me.  I read, cross-stitch (when I can), listen to music, watch 80s videos, and anything else that involves just BEing.  But it's more than the things I can do (or be) in the room; I walk in, and sounds and life are instantly muted.  Now, that's probably because the thick curtains absorb sound, but there's an immediate emotional reaction.  My stress level recedes if I'm stressed, and if I'm happy, I become more so.  Chris and I spend most of our evenings here, and I think it's a sanctuary for him as well.

The most interesting thing about creating this sanctuary is that it coincided with all the other changes I've made this year.  It wasn't a conscious decision, but I can't help but think that it was all part of th whole journey.  I've been working on BEing and creating my ideal life.  Why shouldn't my bedroom be that ideal space to help create that ideal life as well as a place I can BE?

What is your sanctuary?  What have you had to do (decorate, paint, create, buy) to make it your sanctuary?  What do you do in your sanctuary?

Not Ready for Sanctuary Yet - Responsibility Rears Its Ugly Head

I know I said I would talk about sanctuary on Thursday, but I've had some things come up.  On Wednesday, I found myself figuratively paralyzed, and I couldn't do anything.  I was in tears, my eyes and head hurt, and I just didn't know what to do.  I canceled lunch with Stacy, and I went to bed at 9:00 p.m.

Thursday dawned, and it was the same.  Add to that Maggie dog has been having problems, and I had to take her to the vet.  At almost sixteen years old, Maggie could have a host of things wrong, and none of them looked good.

I made the vet appointment and called Chris to tell him about Maggie, really wanting him to come home and take care of me, but not wanting to ask him because he had a new client, prospective employee references to check, and existing clients to take care of; I didn't feel I could ask him to come home just because I was depressed.

I took a shower, thinking that good smelling conditioner from Lush (Jungle conditioner has the mightiest best smell) might help things a bit.  During my shower I made the decision to call Stacy and ask her to come down and help me with all this stuff that I didn't feel I could do.   It  was the hardest thing  I've had to do in a while.  I have this terrible feel that I'll  burden someone or inconvenience her.  I could ask for help, and Stacy would feel obligated to help me.  I've always felt that I should handle everything on my own - I'm sure that's part of the control thing I'll talk about a little later on.

But I swallowed all that fear and called her, and she immediately asked how I was doing. 

"Not well."

"What can I do to help?"

Thank God she asked.  "Can you come down here and take care of all my stuff on my to-do list?" I asked plaintively.

"Absolutely!!!!"

Well, I'm glad someone is excited about my to-do list.

So she showed up, and like the true founder of virtual assistance that she is, she took care of my stuff in record time and in gracious fashion.

Here's a sampling of what she did:

• Called pet sitter to make appointment to take care of Maggie while we're in Chicago visiting my grandparents
• Arranged for a rental car for said trip to Chicago
• Deleted my spam in my email
• Called Invisible Fence to arrange return of Bandit's collar and transmitter
• Called for appointment to get Kathryn's ears pierced
• Called for pedicure appointment (then called back to cancel after she figured out it conflicted with Anastasia's gymnastics)
• Called pharmacy for fax number
• Called dermatologist with pharmacy fax number
• Called insurance company to check on prescription deductible
• Canceled my volunteering stint in Anastasia's classroom and rescheduled
• Researched my magic shoes
• Dropped off a package at the post office
• Drove me to pick up Maggie from the vet (she's mostly okay, but there is some beginnings of kidney problems)
• Helped Anastasia study for her spelling test

There may have been some other things, but these were the main things - and all things I didn't feel I could do but that I felt had to be done.

Stacy came back Friday and went with me to the UPS Store to open a mailbox for Write Well University, package up a gift to send in the mail, return Bandit's collar to Invisible Fence, and go to Nordstrom to look at the magic shoes.  (I thought about buying them, but they weren't as magic as they were the first time I saw them, and, more importantly, I didn't feel balanced wearing them because the heel sloped inward toward the toe.  Bummer.  I'll have to be on the look out for new magic shoes.)

Stacy loved doing this - she says it's like hating to clean your room when you're a kid, but you'll jump at the chance to help your best friend clean her room.  Thanks, Stacy, for a clean room.  :-)  (It's also a great testimonial for virtual assistance - see what VAs can do for your life?)

During these two days we had plenty of time to talk, and Stacy told me that she's been watching my unhappiness build for a while.

That really surprised me, and I thought a lot about it.  I realized that the main cause of my unhappiness is my eyes, and it has been growing for some time.  Why did it come to a head this week?  Well, I think it starts with my extreme sense of responsibility.  See, Dr. Guyton didn't realize he was making a mistake when he told me that I'm still having double vision because I used my eyes so much and they had to work too hard.  They weren't able to naturally drift back to the outside position after my surgery, and now the muscles are too tight.

Guess what I took from that?  That I'm responsible for the condition my eyes are in today.  Never mind that no one ever told me that there could be a possibility of my using my eyes too much and causing the muscles to tighten too prematurely.  It happened, and I did it.

Second Guyton mistake.  He told me that when John Glenn did the exercises, he did them a thousand times a day.  Guyton had no idea what telling me that would do.  I now feel that I have to do them a thousand times a day or I'm failing.  Guess what I took from that?  I'm completely responsible for my eyes healing and getting better.  If they don't, it's all my fault.

I've taken the responsibility several steps further.  I've increased the size on my computer monitors (not a bad thing), but I've also kept myself from doing too much with my eyes.  That means when I really want to watch The Thin Man and cross-stitch, I don't because I'm afraid it will use my eyes too much.  When I would normally play on the computer at night, I don't because I'm afraid it will strain my eyes.  Maybe, I think, if I don't use my eyes too much, and I really baby them, the double vision would decrease.  All because of the choices I made.

The last thing I've done that, on the outside, seems to make sense but really contributes to that sense of over-responsibility is the affirmation I created and have been saying for days.  I really think that even that affirmation tells me that I'm responsible for my healing.  I can make it happen.

I'm tired.

I told Lynn that I felt it was self-care to limit my activities in order to take care of my eyes.  However, I'm really miserable not doing the things that make me happy.  Lynn says that there is a difference between self-care and health care.  I've created a monster; in order to take care of my health, I've sacrificed my self-care, which makes me miserable, and makes my health (physical and mental) suffer. 

Geez.

I think the foundation is my need to be in control.  I feel I can control much (Chris would say that I think I can control everything) in my life, and if I could just work hard enough or long enough, I can make happen what I want to happen.  Vicky says that control is an illusion, and my response to her was that it's an illusion that has served me well.  It really did at one point in helping me survive a traumatic childhood, but maybe it doesn't serve me so well anymore.  If I feel I should be able to control things that I truly have no control over... It doesn't seem as if I'll ever be satisfied with my performance.

I'll admit:  I'm downright scared that my eyesight will never improve and that what I see now at age 35 will be how I'll see for the rest of my life.  Another surgery is an option, but I'm not happy with that option.  I'm closer to accepting surgery now than I have been, but I still remember how bad my vision was recovering from the first surgery.  A second surgery would cause my vision to worsen even more, although hopefully just temporarily.  Even just temporarily, I don't know that I could handle that emotionally.  I'm going to be investigating some alternative therapies (I'm with you on that one, Anne!) and maybe even getting a second opinion.  (All of which, mind you, cause my to-do list items to increase.)

Where am I right now?  Who knows?  I'm farther along on my to-do list items, and I don't feel so overwhelmed by a million things.  More importantly, I know I can and should ask for help.  People who love me are happy to help.  Finally, I just need to accept what is.  It is what it is (thanks for that one, too, Vicky!), and there might not be much I can do about my eyes.  I can do the exercises, wear the granny reading glasses, and keep my monitor text size large.  However, limiting my activities is more detrimental to my well-being than it is helpful to my eye condition.  I will BE instead of feeling responsible to DO.

Aha! Grammar Isn't the Evil Bane Some Would Make It Out to Be!

The day (the day, I tell you!) after I read Lisa's article "Beware of Grammar Gestapo," I found this article in the Washington Post.

Because the new SAT has a section testing how well students can assemble and disassemble (harder than assembling - believe me!), grammar is becoming more popular in English class.

The article talks about how grammar disappeared in the '70s and '80s, but that's not completely true for me.  My formative grammar years were during that '70s/'80s time, and I learned all about prepositions, participles, gerunds, diagramming sentences, and more.  However, I know that  lot of my contemporaries have never diagrammed a sentence, and they say they've never heard of a predicate nominative.  I must have had some English teachers who were old school.  :-)

"Clauses and Commas Make a Comeback" highlights the teaching life of Mike Greiner who teaches grammar in between literature to his high school students.  Here are his Seven Grammatical Sins for your enjoyment:

7. Griener. It's Greiner; I'm an exception to the rule about i and e.

6. Many writers think commas are cool, semicolons are special and sophisticated. Use a semicolon between independent clauses.

5. english. Capitalize the most important subject . . . or proper nouns.

4. Between you and I . . . Use the objective case, i.e., me, after prepositions.

3. This is her. Use the nominative/subjective case for predicate nominatives.

2. Grammer. If you'd like an A in English, spell grammar with 2 A's.

1. I'm doing good in English this year! Really? Are you curing cancer or helping the homeless? If not, use the adverb well, not the adjective good.

I would have been happier if he had had Eight Grammatical Sins and included pronoun agreement, but I'll be happy with these seven for now.